


and the shot goes (never get you back)

by wayonwayout



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Closeted Character, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV First Person, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 17:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9668111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayonwayout/pseuds/wayonwayout
Summary: "We're not gonna hug in front of this whole town."There's more than one story about that summer. Jughead works to bring them together. (Meanwhile, Archie makes some decisions -- good, bad, and nonsensical ones (not necessarily in that order, although that may depend on who you ask.))





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I, like, never write in first person. However, emo suite life Jughead Jones does, because he thinks he's in a noir film, and it's incredible and delightful and so here we are. Most of this is not in first person. ALSO, I fudged the timeline for summer because I forgot high school summers are only like two to two and a half months. Sue me. 
> 
> I haven't been a teenager in a few years, but I'm pretty sure it went something like this. 
> 
> Warnings: internalized homophobia (not from the pov character); implied bad home life; kids making bad but understandable choices and having dumb but understandable fights.

_I lied when I said this story begins with Cheryl and Jason. Too much happened that summer, when the days ran longer than ever and anything was possible; you could smell the Sweetwater from across town, the air was so clear, and the local kids set off fireworks every night for a month leading up to the Fourth of July. That’s when it started -- about a month before. And it wasn’t Cheryl and Jason. It was Archie, and it was me._

_I told you this town is full of secrets._

_I’m all about summer. You might not think it, with the blacks and the greys and the flannels, but I can weather a little heat stroke for the rest of it: barbecues in the Andrews’ backyard, spending all weekend out in the park with a picnic basket, a frisbee, and good company, and best of all,_ no school _. Sure, Archie worked, but that -- that wasn’t so bad. I worked too, part-time on an old ice cream truck. But on the days I didn’t (and sometimes, on the days I did,) I’d swing by, and Archie would shake his head, and grin, and point me to a clear patch of shade out of the way where I could sit._

_“My dad’s gonna get one of those whistle alarms if you keep hanging around distracting me,” he said once, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “The kind they talked about in the news, to scare off loiterers. For like, convenience stores.”_

_“You think the government is gonna let those puppies go to waste in convenience stores? Come on, man,” I replied, not looking away from the apples I was trying to juggle. Trying is the operative word -- like the victims in one of Agatha Christie’s grimmer works, they fell to the ground,_ one, two, three _. I sighed heavily and dropped my head back to rest on the tree I was sitting against, squinting up at him. “Distracting you?” I said._

 _Archie sort of -- looked away. “You know,” he said. “Doing dumb, cool stuff like that. ‘S more interesting than_ work _.”_

 _“I don’t think it counts as cool until I can actually_ do _it.”_

_“You don’t see me learning to juggle.”_

_“I don’t, you’re right. And it’s a problem. You’re gonna have to get on that.”_

_Archie threw his head back and laughed, sweaty and tan and gross in the sunlight. I could smell him from the other side of the pavement. That’s the kind of thing you find charming when it’s your best friend. Being laughed at by a smelly loser. Dumb, cool stuff like that._

_There was a month of those easy, sunny days. But at some point, maybe halfway through June, something changed._

_I still don’t know what it was. It wasn’t Archie’s shoulders, although at some point he had decided to start having shoulders. And some of the girls started coming by when he was working, hanging around the edges like I did, their eyes catching on those new shoulders. I guess I noticed too, but not in the same way. I was -- I don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I looked too, weirdly fascinated by the sudden change in someone I knew inside out. And maybe he saw me looking._

_I don’t think it was the shoulders. It might have been the freckles._

 

“Jug?”

Jughead knocks his laptop entirely off of Pop’s counter in his rush to get it closed.

“Shit, dude, let me help,” Archie says, hands springing back off his shoulders like Jughead's emitting a very strong force field and they're only just now noticing. He ducks his head as he bends, scrambling around Jughead’s knees for the computer and its cord. Jughead takes this as a very brief blessing from the universe, and tries to recover his cool before Archie looks up again.

“Is it broken?” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Am I gonna have to take it to the shed out back?”

Archie makes a considering noise. “A little bruised, maybe. Since when does Pop’s have a shed?”

“Oh, buddy,” Jughead says. “That’s sad.”

Archie laughs, a little nervously. “Right,” he says, then points to the chair beside Jughead. “Can I, uh, can I sit?”

“It’s a free country, supposedly,” Jughead says, turning forward to inspect his laptop. Archie doesn’t move. When Jughead looks up, Archie is looking back at him, biting his lip. He looks -- still nervous, still something. It doesn’t make sense, but, for some reason, it’s exactly what Jughead’s feeling too.

 _New-old friendship jitters_ , he tells himself, and shifts over slightly, nodding at the chair. “Come on, dude.”

“Yeah, right,” Archie says, a grin unfurling shyly like early morning rays. Jughead’s a little too well acquainted with those -- Pop’s _open twenty-four hours_ policy is a blessing and a curse. He’s tired to the point of brain fog, honestly, so he sees the way Archie slides into the seat, stilted and careful, but doesn’t quite process it.

It’s quiet for a long moment, and Jughead tries to think back, remember if Archie asked him a question or what -- if he gave any indication of why he came over in the first place. They’re, like, good, but not _good_ , exactly. Not sit-together-at-lunch good, or catch-a-movie-after-school good, or any of the other goods they used to be. So Archie had come over, and -- Jughead remembered, Archie had put his hands on his shoulders, and said _Jug,_ but -- before that --

It’s useless. If Archie had said anything before that, Jughead had been too deep in his writing to notice.

“So what brings you to Pop’s on this fine night?” he says, because the silence has gone too long, and he can’t come up with anything else.

Archie shrugs. “I dunno. I was out for a drive, and I saw the lights, and I just -- decided it’s where I wanted to be.”

Jughead quirks an eyebrow and Archie shrugs, sheepish.

“I make a lot of decisions that don’t make sense, man,” he says, and smiles when Jughead laughs. This time it’s less shy.

“You? _No_ ,” Jughead says. “I’m shocked. Expect to see this on the front page of next week’s _Blue And Gold_.”

“Jerk,” says Archie, shoving him -- nudging, really -- with his elbow. Jughead fights a smile -- then drops it entirely as Archie flinches back, then stares down at the countertop, looking lost.

“Arch?” he says.

“Sorry, man,” Archie says. “Sorry. I just -- I just don’t know how to do this.”

Jughead furrows his brow, staring at him. “Alright,” he says, slowly.

“Listen, I should go,” Archie says, “I should, I should -- Pop, his burger’s on me, okay? I should go.”

“Archie,” Jughead says, and only just bites back the _what the fuck_ that wants to follow.

“I’m just, like, feeling really weird and -- and tight, like, wound up, right now. It’s why I went driving and -- I just can’t, right now, okay?”

Archie looks so stressed, so apologetic, so _guilty_ , that Jughead can’t even be mad, even though this feels a little too close to -- to what had happened. But he’s never been good at staying mad at Archie Andrews, not really.

“No problem, Arch,” he says, and Archie visibly droops with relief.

“Hey,” he says, “Betty and Veronica and me, we’re seeing a movie on Friday. If you wanna come. You should -- you should come.”

“I’ll check my calendar,” Jughead jokes, but it feels awkward in his mouth, and it probably comes out all wrong. Fuck. Archie runs a hand through his hair and Jughead tries again. “Thanks for the burger, man.”

“Well, I definitely owe you at least one,” Archie says. He rocks back on his heels. “I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah,” Jughead says. Archie’s already halfway to the door -- and then he’s gone. “Yeah.”

  


_I was naive back then. I told myself and everyone who’d listen that the world was a bad place and the universe, grand arbiter of fate, shouldn’t be trusted, but I didn’t believe it myself. I’d look at Archie Andrews and I’d believe, under all that showy cynicism, that there were some things that were wholly good in this world after all._

_Naive, like I said._

_It was an easy thing to believe, on those sweet summer weekends, all day spent in the park under the sun, dozing in a pile like puppies, a little too honest about everything. Archie would jog off when the ice cream truck came, and every time he’d try --_

_“Hey Mister, my friend Jughead, he’s over there, he works the weekdays, could we get a discount?”_

_And every time --_

_“Your friend Jughead eats half the stock when he works the weekdays, pay or scram.”_

_So he’d pay, because he was eating almost more than me by that point, hungry all the time from the growth spurt and the laborious day job. He’d come back, and he’d refuse to give me mine; I’d try to tackle him, and we’d hit the ground, and only his quick reflexes would save the popsicles from the dirt._

_In retrospect, it’s a miracle I didn’t give myself a concussion ramming into him like that. I’m not exactly Mr. Muscles -- I’m better at the flight than the fight, if you catch my meaning. He must have been going easy on me._

_I was writing something else back then. I’d bring a notebook out to the park, and after ice cream I’d write until the sun and the feeling of a full stomach lulled me to sleep. This time, the last weekend of June, I dozed off to the sound of Archie rattling on about our upcoming road trip. My pen slipped across the page, a soft, wavering line, and my eyes closed. When they opened again, I’d been rolled over, my head was on Archie’s stomach, and his fingers were brushing through my hair. My beanie had fallen off._

_“You’re too bony for this now, Arch,” I said quietly. It came out slurred. I was so warm, close to falling back asleep, and that light touch wasn’t helping._

_“I’ve been saying that to_ you _for years. Payback, dude.”_

_I drew my knees up, stretching and fumbling with one hand to the side for my notebook and pen. I flipped through the pages to where I’d been, resting its spine against my thigh._

_“What’re you writing about?”_

_I was always writing a hundred different things back then. I had no focus, but that didn’t seem like a problem. Nothing had happened to_ give _me focus. Not really._

_“Summer,” I mumbled. “Days that feel endless, even though you know they aren’t. But not in, like, an existential dread way. The days will end, but something keeps going after. That feeling, and two boys in the summer.”_

_Archie hummed, and I felt it through the back of my head. He was still touching my hair. “Are they friends?”_

_“Yeah,” I said. “Best friends.”_

_That felt too simple, out loud. I wasn’t saying it right._

_“Juggie,” Archie said. I looked up at him, craning my neck back. He pushed himself up on one elbow, then curled forward, and his hand shifted to cup the back of my head, pulling me gently towards him, so slow I didn’t even realize it was happening. Or maybe_ _the sudden ringing in my ears, and the tremors like an inland earthquake in my stomach, had me so distracted I didn't notice, and it really wasn't so slow or gentle at all._

_He kissed me, just once, softly._

_I remember my mouth opening, and then the way my whole body jostled back involuntarily, elbows and shoulders jerking, feeling shocked and dazed and wide, wide awake._

_Archie stared at me, eyes white all around the irises, as scared as I’d ever seen him. He flinched back too, belated, so I slid all the way off of him, and we were two bodies, separate, on a ragged picnic blanket under a sun that didn’t feel so warm anymore._

_“Sorry,” he said, “Shit, fuck, sorry -- I don’t -- sorry, sorry --”_

_He got to his feet so fast I could barely follow it. My ears were still ringing._

_“I’ve gotta --” he said, “I didn’t -- I’ve gotta go, Jug, I --”_

_I nodded automatically, but I don’t think he even saw. He was already walking off, shoulders hunched up to his ears, rushing, knees too stiff, face hidden away from me. I watched him go, dumbstruck, feeling a whole new kind of alone. My beanie was on the blanket, on the other side of the crumpling Archie had left in the fabric when he stood up. I picked it up with numb fingers and put it back on._

_I was beginning to understand. The world wasn’t good, or soft, or warm. I’d been right all along. But I didn’t really get it, not all the way, until the next weekend. The Fourth of July._

 

This time it’s Archie waiting on Jughead’s doorstep when Jughead makes his slow, reluctant way home, late enough to technically be morning. Archie’s got his jacket over his shoulders, because it’s starting to become mid-autumn-cool, and he’s staring down at his phone but not touching the screen. All the lights are off in the house behind him.

“Hey,” Jughead calls. Then, “How long have you been waiting, dumbass?”

“Not long,” Archie says. “I know you don’t get home early if, you know.”

The _If you can help it_ hangs in the silence, impossible to ignore the way things unsaid always are.

“You wanna come in?” Jughead offers, if only to drown all that out. “I don’t think we’d both fit in the treehouse, anymore.”

“No, that’s -- you wanna sit, instead?”

Jughead shrugs. “Sure,” and drops to sit beside him, a half a foot of space between them. He wraps his arms around his knees.

Archie stares at his phone some more, then says, “You know what I said, about bad decisions?”

“Be fair to yourself,” Jughead says. “Your decisions don’t make sense, but that doesn’t automatically make them bad. I’m big on nonsense. Chaos is the only way we’ll bring down _the man_ .” He raises _rock-on_ devil horns at Archie, levering as much of a smirk as he can manage.

“I’m serious, Jug,” Archie says, but he’s laughing a little.

“So am I.”

There’s another silence. “I think they’re bad decisions,” Archie says. “Sometimes, at least. I can’t seem to stop doing the wrong thing. And --”

Jughead waits.

“I can’t stop thinking about Jason,” Archie says, quieter, like a confession.

They’d had another conversation like this, Jughead remembers. In Pop’s, when they weren’t even friends. “About his legacy?”

“I dunno. I just feel this, like -- like there’s something hanging over our heads, waiting to drop. Like a _Looney Tunes_ thing. And this could be the most important time of our lives -- _everything_ could depend on what happens now -- and I keep fucking up.”

There’s two things Jughead could say to this. Three, if he wants to just tell Archie to fuck off and let him go to bed. But really only two. He _could_ tell Archie that that’s the way this story goes. He has his eye on the horizon and he knows there’s no happy ending there. A kid is _dead_ \-- this was never going to wrap up nicely for anyone after that. Jughead knows what story he’s in. Archie’s only just catching up now.

That’s the first response he thinks of. He could say it, because it’s true. But it’s not the _only_ truth.

Instead, he says, “Well, you got me back. Was that a fuck up?”

Archie huffs. “No,” he says. “But I fucked up losing you in the first place, didn’t I?”

“Popular opinion might disagree,” says Jughead, smirking, but Archie makes a frustrated noise and says, “ _No_ , don’t, I don’t care about ‘popular opinion.’ I fucked up. You -- you deserved better.”

Jughead falls silent. He peeks at Archie from the corner of his eye, through the dark fringe sticking out from under his beanie.

“You did get me back, though,” he says, finally. “So maybe you’re doing better now than you think.”

“Maybe,” Archie says. He looks at Jughead, then away, back down to his phone. His fingers are looser around it now, like something’s settled inside of him.

They sit quietly for a while, until Jughead breaks the silence with a yawn.

“Oh, crap, it’s late,” Archie says. “Sorry, you should --”

Jughead waves him off. “It’s okay. I was planning on sleeping through first period anyway.” He makes a face. “Calculus.”

“Like you’re not top in the class.”

“Third,” Jughead says. “Would you believe I’ve got a lot on my mind this year?”

Archie huffs a quiet laugh, then sighs. “Well, I’m sorry anyway. I guess I still find it too easy to talk to you.”

Jughead hugs his knees closer to his chest. The cold is getting sharper, or maybe he’s just noticing it more in the stillness. “I don’t mind,” he says. It doesn’t come out strong enough to be a throw-away, like he meant. It comes out the kind of soft that says _this is a_ _lie_ \-- or, worse, _this is a_ _truth I wish you didn’t know_.

His eyes have adjusted to the dark, and he can see Archie duck his head, the way he does when he’s flushing and embarrassed about it. Archie clears his throat, then looks up again, and Jughead looks away into the empty street, pretending he hadn’t been watching. “So. What’s new with you?” Archie says.

“Hmm?”

Archie ducks his head again. “Veronica says I never ask stuff like that, it’s always all about me. I’m trying to, you know, do better and stuff.”

Jughead chuckles. “See? Not such a fuck up after all.”

“It’s a work in progress. Are you avoiding the question?”

Sometimes, Archie is stupid insightful. Jughead sighs.

“This isn’t my story.”

Archie frowns like Jug’s lost him, but asks, “Whose is it, then?” anyway. And that -- that’s Archie, that’s always been Archie, following Jughead even when he doesn’t one-hundred-percent grasp where they’re going, because, for some reason, he thinks Jughead has something valuable to say.

“Yours, I think,” Jughead says around the sudden tightness in his throat. “Betty’s, Veronica’s, too. The Blossom’s. But from where I’m standing, mostly yours. I have an admitted bias, though.”

“That’s dumb,” says Archie. “If it’s mine then it’s yours too. That’s how it works.”

Jughead tilts his head, looks down at where Archie’s fingers are fidgeting around his phone. “Is it?”

“Of course it is.”

Archie’s eyes glint in the dark when Jughead meets them, like sparks thrown up from a smouldering log as it splits along its seam. He looks steadfast, sure in that Archie Andrews way that says he’s not sure at all -- he never is -- but he’s determined enough to will certainty into being.

“Okay,” Jughead says, and then, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing pretty good. At ‘doing better, and stuff.’”

Archie smiles, and Jughead’s chest clenches.

“It’s worth a lot, Jug.”

 

_The worst thing about betrayal is that feeling when you realize that you’ve been lying to yourself. Realize you really did see this coming, and you fooled yourself into thinking it could end any other way to push back the hurt and sadness for just a few more minutes, okay, just a few more._

_More than anger, more than shock, that's what kills: the self-recrimination. Finding out you’re exactly as stupid as you always fought to believe you weren’t._

_Archie cancelled the road trip last minute. Said he was sick, and I believed him, because I’ve always been a sucker for that kid. And I was scared, and confused, and I didn’t want to push. Even while he was telling me over the phone that he couldn’t make it, all I felt was relief, because we hadn’t talked since the previous weekend and I’d thought -- I’d thought he was avoiding me._ Paranoid piece of shit, _I told myself, holding the phone to my ear with a white-knuckled grip._ Worrying over nothing.

_I was lying to myself._

_He was nowhere to be found on July 4th -- I know why now, obviously. I spent the day locked in my room, doing a Bogart marathon and ignoring my problems. I hadn’t picked up a pen all week._

_On the fifth, I ran into him -- nearly literally -- at Riverdale’s only bowling alley. There’s something universally grimy about the exterior of bowling alleys: the neon lights, the dirty walls, the cigarette butts in the gutter. I’d always loved this place. I wasn’t going to play; my head was heavy and my footsteps heavier, and I felt tired and ill in that whole-bodied way that required intervention. Sometimes Mr. Ahadi, the owner, let me come in and just sit. Said Archie and I pretty much kept his business afloat when we were kids, and it was the least he could do._

_Since then, he’d partnered with the arcade next door and torn down the dividing wall. Walking past the arcade, I could hear a familiar, booming laugh -- Reggie Mantle and his concussion-prone cronies. I raised a one-fingered salute to the window and veered for the bowling alley door. It swung outward just as I was reaching for the handle, and Archie Andrews stumbled out, laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world._

_He skidded to a stop when he saw me. And that was the moment. The slamming of the doors, the house turned inside out, the furniture crash-landing on the lawn and tearing up the grass: the moment of realization._

_I was exactly as stupid as I’d always feared, and here was the proof._

_“Arch!” someone yelled from inside, in the deep tones of the testosterone-bloated. “Hurry up or I’m taking your place in the Galaga queue!”_

_“Galaga?” I said. I almost sounded calm. “And I thought_ I _was the hipster here.”_

_“Jughead,” said Archie. He swallowed visibly. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else than there, in that moment, with me. He looked like he never wanted to see me again. A week of agonizing silence, and now this._

_It all made sense to me then. The story -- it came together before my eyes, like it had always been there, waiting for me to get my head out of my ass and see it. Archie and his new shoulders; Archie and his easy smile, his easy way with people; the jocks in the back room, calling for him like the trumpet of fate; and me. Always a little on the outside. Always a little off. A little too weird, a little too dark, a little too wrong._

_And there was the self-recrimination: I’d been stupid to ever think it could be otherwise._

_“You couldn’t even bother to tell me to my face?” I said. I felt like I was standing five feet back from my body, out the doors, on that dirty sidewalk in the shade cast by the big neon bowling pin sign._

_Archie looked lost, and embarrassed, and furtive. “Can we do this some other time?” he said, his gaze flicking away from mine and then back. “I’ve gotta -- I’ve gotta go add change to the meter.”_

_It all made sense. The All-American Boy. Kissing his weirdo freak best friend in the sunlight, in the summer, where_ anyone _could see -- that’s not a story that ever ends happily. All week I’d wanted to believe that we could go on like before, pretend it never happened, but no._

 _I_ knew _this story. It had been going this way all along. Might as well get it over with._

 _“Forget it,_ pal _,” I said. “I think we both have better things to do with our time. Have fun shooting virtual blanks with your new friends. Gotta affirm that masculinity, right?”_

_“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Archie said, face screwed up in frustration, at me, at the situation -- I don’t know. I didn’t care._

_I smirked. “I’m saying: leave me the hell alone.”_

_A muscle in his cheek twitched as he gritted his teeth. “Fine,” he said, “fine,” but he just kept standing there, staring at me, looking angry in a way that_ hurt _me, and I --_

_I turned around and walked away._

_It was too bright out. It shouldn’t have been that bright; something should have changed, the seasons should have rolled over, this couldn’t be the same summer it had been. I turned the corner and wiped at my eyes._

_The world had changed around me, or been revealed as something other than I thought it was. Something fundamental had been ripped away. And when I heard, later that day, about Cheryl and Jason, it felt like it made sense. The chaos of it made sense._ _It was all part of the same story._

 _The summer sun; the flickering bowling alley sign; a drenched girl in white; the Sweetwater smell in the air; and us. Two boys who were never meant to last. The summer ended, and it_ ended _. What carried on moving forward was different than I’d been expecting, but, to be honest -- and I was finally, finally being honest with myself -- it made sense. It all did._

_I hid my old notebook away, and started writing something new._

 

It’s getting dark outside the station when they let Jughead go, the day melting into a late fall evening in burnt orange hues. He’d been alone in the interrogation room for hours before someone came in. He’d answered their questions and they hadn’t answered his; they’d made dissatisfied noises and left; they’d come back, asked some more, then finally, hours later, told him he was free to go. His jacket, backpack, and beanie were waiting at the front desk, and he’d collected them in his arms and walked right out. He didn’t want to spend one more second in there, with the way they were looking at him.

In the evening gloom, he stands on the top of the steps and breathes, staring out at the streetlights. They’re just starting to turn on as the sky darkens, dim and yellow with age. He barely sees them.

There’s a lot for him to process. Dilton _fucking_ Doiley, for one; Dilton _fucking_ Doiley who had seen him out in the woods near the Sweetwater, sleuthing and taking pictures, a week after Jason’s disappearance, and Dilton _fucking_ Doiley who had decided to get his revenge. And Jughead -- the weirdo who always gave the administration trouble, too nosy, too prickly, too interested in things he shouldn’t be -- didn’t get a nice little questioning session in the principle’s office. He got _booked_.

He’s pretty sure that's a pun, and he’s pretty sure he’s mad about it. Among other things.

“Juggie, hey,” someone calls from the street. It takes him a minute to pull himself together enough to locate them. It’s Archie, because of course it is.

“I never thought I’d see these skies again, but I’m a free man now,” Jughead says, with half-hearted melodrama. “Also, never cross Dilton Doiley. The kid holds a _grudge_.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll handle it.”

Archie jogs the last few steps to the stairs and looks up at him. The station is dark behind Jughead and the streetlight is bright behind Archie, so he’s backlit, his face all cast in shadows. Jughead’s a little too tired, a little too raw, to be comfortable all visible like this, so he steps down himself and joins Archie on the shadowed street.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he says.

Archie frowns. “Are you kidding, Jug? Of course I’m here.”

“So you don’t think I did it? Not even for a second, not even a shadow of a doubt? You’re really so sure, Andrews?” And he’s pushing, he knows he is, Jughead has never met a bruise he hasn’t wanted to poke and by this point he is _all_ bruise, he has been since this summer, and --

“Shut up, Jughead, just shut up and stop _thinking_ , I know what you’re doing and it’s _bullshit_.”

Jughead, to his dismay, finds himself gaping at Archie like an idiot.

“I know you didn’t do it,” Archie says. “You’re _you_.”

Jughead barks a laugh. “Yeah, I’m me. The Sixth Sense freak, the creepy loner.”

“You’re not a creepy loner. And The Sixth Sense was about a little kid, dude.”

Archie looks so earnest, so horribly, awfully, dearly _Archie_ , that Jughead can’t fight back the way something in his chest softens and cracks open. He thinks it must show on his face, and he thinks that, despite the shadows, Archie must see it, because there -- Archie loses the frown and starts to smile, just barely, there in the corners of his mouth. The streetlights are all the way on, now, brighter than before, pushing back the shadows, and yeah, Jughead can see him, just faintly. Which means he can see Jughead too.

Jughead doesn’t feel as scared of that as he did a minute ago.

“But I am a freak?” he says.

Archie rolls his eyes to the heavens. “You’re _Jug_.”

Jughead pushes his bangs out of his eyes, then stares back out into the street, thinking. It’s quiet out. The quiet of a small town is, by his reckoning, the world’s biggest liar. He shivers. He hasn’t put his jacket and hat back on, still clutching them to his chest, and Archie -- Archie, he realizes, is looking at his hair, an odd look on his face, and his fingers are twitching at his sides.

There’s something strange about his hands, and Jughead squints down at them. There’s dark across the knuckles -- dried blood, he realizes. Archie’s knuckles are split, and, when Jughead takes a more careful look at him, so is his lip.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Archie shrugs, then winces like it hurts. “Reggie was talking some bullshit,” he says.

Jughead stares and swallows. “You gotta stop fighting my battles for me, man.”

It hangs there in the air between them: the knowledge that, at one point, Archie _hadn’t_. He’d chosen not to, and it had hurt like motherfucking hell, and now -- here they were. Someplace new, where they were a little more cautious of each other, a little more careful with each other, and Archie had split his knuckles on someone’s face for Jughead, something he hadn’t done since they were nine years old.

 _A sudden change,_ Jughead thinks, remembering, and he swallows again.

Archie flushes, but doesn’t look away. “I don’t want to,” he says, voice rough.

There’s two ways this could go. Three, but really two. Jughead could grab for what was theirs, before: best friends, watching each other’s backs, sunlit days and late night talks. This story isn’t what he’d ever thought it would be, but he could guide it to semi-familiar territory. He could play it safe.

He’s never been good at playing it safe.

He inhales deeply and sets his armful on the ground. He nods to himself, and then he steps into Archie’s space, nearly chest to chest under the glow of the streetlight.

Archie looks down at him, eyes dark and wary. His mouth makes the shape of his name, _Jug_ , but no sound comes out, like it got caught, cobweb fine and _stubborn_ , in his throat.

Jughead waits, because this one -- this one is on Archie. And Archie touches Jughead’s bare arm, down by his side, with cold fingers; then he leans down the bare inch-and-a-half between them, and kisses him.

It’s not like the last time, all those months ago. Jughead is cold and tired and frazzled and, frankly, swaying on his feet a little bit. But he doesn’t pull back, and neither does Archie. Instead, Archie’s thumb sweeps along the flex of muscle in Jughead’s forearm. Jughead opens his mouth under Archie’s, just a little, and Archie’s other hand comes up and settles in his hair.

It’s good. It’s really good. Jughead might need a ventilator in a minute, he’s so scared, but Archie is steady against him. He lifts one hand and presses it to Archie’s chest, which is warm like summer, and Archie’s heart hammers under his palm.

When they break apart, neither of them steps back. Archie’s fingers play a little with the hair at the back of Jughead’s neck distractedly, and Jughead shivers. The air between them feels very fragile.

“What is this?” Jughead asks, when he can breathe with some semblance of normalcy again.

Archie’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t look away, even though he looks as unsteady as Jughead’s ever seen him. “I don’t know,” he says.

Jughead thinks about that, then nods. “Okay.”

The streetlight flickers overhead. Archie’s hand slides down his arm to his wrist, and then to his palm, where he laces their fingers together. Their breath mists white in the air between them, and Jughead --

Jughead smiles, just a little. “Okay,” he says again.

 

_I don’t know what this is now. This story; Archie and me. I lost the thread some way back. There were two stories, and both were true: two boys lost in a golden summer, and a small town crumbling in the cold black of fall._

_And now there’s a middle ground, and something new._

_I can’t tell Jason’s story without Archie’s. I can’t tell Archie’s without mine. And the world is still dark, and the lies are still unravelling, and the murderer is still unknown. But that doesn’t have to be all this story is._

_A boy can take another boy’s hand. Even if it’s just in the dark, when no one is looking. It’s a start -- it's something new. Isn't it?_

  
  
  



End file.
